Thursday, September 30, 2010

In 2010, I wanted to plant some flowers again. I wasn’t thinking of doing an experiment when I started; I just wanted to plant some flowers. So I planted some Brown Eyed Susans in recycled containers that plants are sold in.

Immediately after the fact, I thought I should use some magnets. Since magnets help plants grow, I came up with a hypothesis and experiment.

Davis and Rawls state that the south pole of a magnet will help plants grow. And the north side will impede the growth. The pole that faced the plants was the south pole. I put the magnets close to the tray. If the magnets did help the plants, then the plants closest to the magnets should grow fastest.

Again, everything here was the same. All the seeds came from the same package. All the soil came from the same package also. The magnet used was a type N42, 1 inch square, by 3/8 inch thick. Magnetized axially. If you lay it down, the top is south pole, and the bottom is north pole, or vice versa.

You can see the results here. The magnet is in the white 35mm film container.

As you can see, the plants closer to the south pole of the magnet, grew faster, than the ones further away. As I expected. Proving the thesis.

I've shown pictures of these experiments to a number of people recently, and many have asked me to put it up on the web.

I like blue, and blue flowers are relatively rare. In 2009, I saw some packages of seeds for blue morning glories, and bought them immediately.

The same year, I'd bought some magnets. I suddenly wondered, do magnets affect the growth of plants, and was inspired to do an experiment. Using the morning glory seeds from the same package, I tested for four different scenarios.

1 - Seeds, with powerful magnets inside the pot, and regular water.
2 - Seeds with regular water
3 - Seeds with magnetized water
4 - Seeds with regular water, with a purple plate under the pot

What is magnetized water? It was water had been subjected to a magnetic stirrer. I'd pour water into the container, and stir the water with a magnetic stirrer for about 15 minutes. What is a purple plate? I'd been told it was supposed to do all kinds of wonderful things, so I decided to include it in the tests.